Southern Lehigh exploses by Palmerton, sets up showdown with Northwestern

Eyeing next week's much-anticipated showdown at Northwestern, Southern Lehigh quarterback Travis Edmond said his team has to "clean up" the mistakes it made Friday night at Palmerton.

John Toman and his staff will surely find some this week -- but they're going to have to look awfully hard and might have to nit-pick a little bit after the beat-down the Spartans put on the Blue Bombers.

How do you pick apart an offense that unofficially produced 540 yards, a defense that forced five turnovers (two that resulted in touchdowns0 and a special teams unit that scored on a kickoff return in a dominating and completely unexpected 68-21 Colonial League victory that completely stunned the Bombers' portion of a huge Homecoming crowd in Palmerton?

"We completed all our assignments and we didn't make many mistakes if any at all. But we have to clean up every little mistake we made, every penalty ... everything," Edmond said of the impending visit to Northwestern, the league's lone unbeaten after its win Friday night at Salisbury.

"They played at a championship-level caliber, and that's what we want to get to," Palmerton coach Chris Walkowiak said.

Edmond threw for 276 yards and five touchdowns, three of them in the first half to help the Spartanws go into the break with a stunning 41-14 lead over a team that came into the game with the identical 4-1 record.

The dagger was a picture-perfect 54-yard strike to Ethan Price on the final play of the half after the Spartans had run the clock down to two seconds before taking a time out to set up the play. What made it even more impressive was that Price was the only downfield receiver on the play, and Edmond put the ball in just the right spot for 6-foot-2 junior to go over his defender and then use his speed to outrun the pursuit.

Edmond then turned the second of their the Spartans three interceptions of sophomore Garrett Perschy into his fifth touchdown pass early in the third quarter, and after a two-point conversion attempt failed, induced the mercy rule when they drove 89 yards following a fumble recovery.

"We talked during the time out about making a stop and then finishing off a drive to start the third quarter and get it down to a two-score game by the start of the fourth quarter. But that kind of opened the floodgates," Walkowiak said of Price's touchdown catch. "Credit to them -- Edmond made a hell of a throw, and Price can make plays."

Toman said there was no concern that the Spartans would get caught looking ahead to the Tigers.

"I respect everything that [Walkowiak] is doing here and they've played well up until this point," Toman said. "We expected a dogfight tonight ... we were only worried about this one. We lost a game earlier in the year to Saucon, and we just can't afford to lose another one."

Early on it appeared the game was destined to be a shootout. Edmond hooked up with Price for a score to cap the opening drive, and after Perschy answered with a touchdown pass to Nick Sander, the Spartans responded with another scoring dcrive capped by Edmond's 1-yard run.

But then after an exchange of punts, Dylan Niedbalski stepped in front of a Perschy pass -- the first interception thrown by the sophomore this year -- and returned it 30 yards for a touchdown.

After another Palmerton punt, Edmond hooked up with Matt Watkins for the first of his two touchdown catches, and the Spartans had a 27-7 lead at the nine-minute mark of the second quarter. Perschy and Sander hooked up again for a 63-yard touchdown strike, but the Spartans scored twice in the last 3:38 of the half to take command.

"Becasuse of the Saucon game we've been stressing to the kids that you can have all the yards in the world you want, but if you don't cross the goal line they don't count," Toman said, referring to the Spartans only loss when the came up empty on five trips into the red zone. "We've been focused on finishing the drive and scoring, and we were able to do that tonight."

"We're going to take this game and learn from it," Walkowiak, said. "What was disappointing was that we didn't take that next step [after a 4-1 start] where I was hoping. I liked how we responded when they got up early, but we just fell off and they're so explosive ... not that they couldn't drive the field, but their big plays just killed us.

"We knew today was a big game, but like i told the kids, next week [at Catasauqua] is abig game too. Everyone's playing to extend their season, and we'll see who's ready to fight and come back."